So These Are the Good Guys?

Mike FloresThursday, March 31, 2011

Not in the "It's a strange world / let's keep it that way" sense of a British Lord of the Jungle's superpowered German daughter on Monster Island. Strange more like black and blue being the good guys.

I know!

You ever think about who we consider the good guys (at least versus "the bad guys")? No one ever wags their fingers at Naya. Naya, with their little green monsters and... not a lot else. Naya is the good guys! But swap white for black—all of a sudden we are talking about the most dangerous forces to ever pull young people towards underage drinking and smoking.

VanMeter "only" finished ninth at last week's Star City Games Open (so just out of the Top 8), but he did so with a deck that is pretty different from most of what we have been looking at in Standard... at least since the rotation of Shards of Alara block.

Old Stuff

VanMeter's deck is a Fauna Shaman deck. Fauna Shaman is there as a consistent two-drop, but one that can both set up Vengevines and set up bullets. Yes, the Vengevine package is weakened by the rotation of Bloodbraid Elf, but it is still a super powerful threat... and one that is once again well positioned in the format. A few months ago, there were nothing but Titans in every deck. Some decks even had eight Titans! Big 6/6 Titans were like walking stop signs for a speedy 4/3, and while there are still Titans in the format, there are fewer, potentially opening up a window for Vengevine.

Hero of Oxid Ridge – A hasty Mythic that can win the game on the spot. Say hello to "no blockers"!

Sunblast Angel – A pretty wicked surprise! You can tutor for the singleton and set up a one-way Wrath of God. Pretty cool in particular with Gideon Jura, which can tap down the opponent's entire team and set up the table-snapping Angel.

Though he was eventually taken out by StarCityGames.com Open Series hero Gerry Thompson with DarkBlade (Caw-Blade splashing Black), Kibler and his Blue-Black Infect deck battled to third place.

This is a remarkably inventive and surprisingly effective weapon of choice.

A huge incentive to playing this strategy is Phyrexian Crusader. The little black poisoner is remarkably well positioned in a format where seemingly everyone is playing four copies of Squadron Hawk and four copies of Stoneforge Mystic. They can't block, and you kill very quickly. Similarly, Boros-type decks with their Plated Geopedes and Goblin Guides can't get through, and can't... you know... block.

Even if you get past the superb positioning of Phyrexian Crusader, infect's unique positioning here really comes to the forefront when you consider the presence of Contagion Clasp.

In this deck, a single scratch from an Inkmoth Nexus can eventually fester into a lethal case of poisoning, given sufficient time. (Like I said before... this is the modern-day good guy?) But Contagion Clasp does a ton of other awesome stuff, too.

Grand Prix Barcelona

The StarCityGames.com Open Series may have given us some very interesting new decks to consider, but there was a Grand Prix going on last week, too! Innovation was going on everywhere, and even though the Grand Prix decks might identify closely with Caw-Blade or Valakut, they represent some pretty amazing changes.

Blue-Black Control

As with Kibler's Infect deck, the most significant names at the GP level would probably be associated with the controlling colors black and blue. Both eventual winner Martin Scheinin and famous control deck designer Guillaume Wafo-Tapa went with Black-Blue Control variants.

Martin went with a classic-ish Blue-Black Control deck with a full set of Tectonic Edges. I know that earlier we talked about a general drop-off of Titan frequency in Standard, but Martin's deck showed no shortage of 6/6 monsters for six, with Grave Titans and Wurmcoil Engines both.

Somewhat unusual for Blue-Black Control (especially with four Tectonic Edges) is a reduction of Spreading Seas from four to only two main deck, but that two-of is kind of counterbalanced by a pair of awesome Tumble Magnets. In a deck like Martin's—even without the proliferate mechanic—the Magnet can set up the opponent's creatures for Black Sun's Zenith card advantage.

Wafo-Tapa's shell consisted of largely the same cards that Marin played, but instead of running four Titans and two Spreading Seas, he ran "just" the two über-reliable Grave Titans but all four Spreading Seas. Wafo commented that Liliana Vess was one of his best spells; he ran a second one in his Blue-Black Control list.

Blue-Red-Green

Blue-Red-Green remains one of the most popular decks in the Standard metagame. Though it is one of the (seemingly) few decks that lacks second turn Stoneforge Mystic and Squadron Hawks, Blue-Red-Green still has the mighty Lotus Cobra, that explosive Dark Ritual with legs (well, figuratively).

Blue-Red-Green can command from a diverse base of threats, the best in Titans (and continually chooses Inferno Titan), the best in planeswalkers, the lightning-quick Lightning Bolt, the ability to counter target spell, and... well... almost anything it wants.

Valakut Variants

The onetime Standard boogeyman has failed to perform at its former levels since the printing of Sword of Feast and Famine, and has thus had to learn to adapt. Sword of Feast and Famine can get a little white creature in past any of Valakut's Battlements, Titans, and Plant tokens, allowing especially White-Blue to crash in for tons of damage and leave back mana for countermagic.

The answer is once again Tumble Magnet. Sajgalik's version can use Tumble Magnet to lock down a Sword-carrier and avoid much of the violence that Valakut has lately been subject to.

Older versions of this deck relied on Lightning Bolts and other fast removal against beatdown decks. This version instead goes for Lotus Cobra explosiveness—including coming off a Green Sun's Zenith—to hit Titans aplenty.

Though Eduardo didn't run Lightning Bolts and so on, if he wants to kill creatures, he can. Tumble Magnet can force the opponent to commit more threats to the battlefield, opening up the avenue for Pyroclasm or Slagstorm card advantage.

The first layer of innovation over straight White-Blue Caw-Blade post-Paris was the red splash.

The current dominant splash is black. Black gives the white-blue shell Go for the Throat, one of the most flexible spot removal cards in recent memory, as well as the various fast discard options—Duress and Inquisition of Kozilek especially—to interact with other big spell decks.

We're going to wind down this week's look at the newest in Standard innovation with Simon Bertiou's hybrid-hybrid deck, my pick for the most interesting and innovative deck among a whole mess of Black-Blue Infect, resurgent Naya builds, magnetic Molten Pinnacles, and Wafo being Wafo.

Bertiou hybridized not two, but three, distinct strategies that we have talked about in this column over the course of the last several months:

White-Blue Proliferate – This deck has a Contagion Clasp engine, powering up a variety of planeswalkers, both main and side. Not just Jace, the Mind Sculptor or Gideon Jura (in fact those aren't where—or how many—you would expect), but fives up to and including Venser the Sojourner plus the ever-present Tumble Magnet (four of those).

Despite the sometimes-seeming dominance of single archetypes, Standard continues to show us tremendous opportunities for innovation. I don't know if the coolest thing is that one of the highest-win-percentage decks in the format plays Jace Beleren rather than Jace, the Mind Sculptor, or that you can cram three different decks into just one stack of sixty.

In any case, there are some truly cool options for Magic Online play, Friday Night Magic, or upcoming Grand Prix. Have fun!